Philip Jang

As racial and economic disparities both within and outside of the Columbia community continue to be exacerbated by the worsening public health crisis, the tuition strike has gained considerable traction, even capturing the attention of national news outlets. The demands being made of the University are comprehensive, such as a 10 percent reduction in the cost of attendance, more satisfactorily meeting its obligations to the West Harlem community, and more widespread recognition of student workers. These demands have found widespread support in the University with nearly 2,000 students already pledging support, myself included.

For most college students, learning how to live with a roommate is essential to surviving college. I personally was luckier than most, and I’m happy to say that I had a fairly harmonious relationship with my roommate. Inevitably, an important part of domestic coexistence is the act of compromise, and an often contentious flashpoint is food.

Despite the many drawbacks of life during COVID-19, it would seem that working from home has afforded some luxuries. Rolling out of bed, fixing breakfast, and commuting to work can all be done in one fell swoop, and we can now start our days in just five minutes. Yet, the numerous calls to reinstitute in-person classes point to the fact that we ultimately need separate work and home spaces to protect us from the greater insanity of living constantly in the same place in which we work.

The pandemic has deprived us of the physical spaces and activities upon which many of our interactions with other people were centered. While Zoom meetings have offered a visual and auditory substitute for personal interaction, they lack the full set of stimuli and cues that you would normally have when speaking with someone in real life. Though Zoom has presented the same set of challenges to all our relationships, it affects the strong and weak ones asymmetrically—revealing which one of them fails to escape the need to share space, time, and action, a consequence that has reverberated from our personal lives to institutions of grand scale.

In the midst of our lockdown, there seems to be a race to find productive solutions to our boredom. Even I wrote a column about finding purpose in quarantine. Yet despite increased awareness of mental health challenges during the pandemic, it seems to me that we can still pay more attention to the emotional needs that this virus has exacerbated. Especially at home in Long Island, where everyone knows someone affected by the virus, its impacts are much more intimate, and listless boredom is just one trivial tribulation.

One of my mother’s favorite stories, which she likes to tell at my expense, has to do with my first day of preschool. I suppose I was a bit of a brat when I was younger. It happened to be someone’s birthday, and I apparently exclaimed that it would be my birthday soon as well. Thankfully, my teacher was feeling diplomatic and told the class, “Let’s sing Happy Birthday to Philip!” to which I responded, “Who’s Philip?” Up until then, I hadn’t left the sheltered confines of home where my parents had only called me by my Korean name. I didn’t know who “Philip” was, but I would come to find out very soon.

Sitting in bed, I am scrolling through my phone and thinking about getting up to go drink a cup of coffee. For just that fleeting moment, life feels normal—until I realize that I’m at home and not waking up to my roommate’s alarm in Woodbridge Hall. I’ve lived on Long Island since I was five, but today, home doesn’t feel like home; being here seems wrong, despite the fact that this is exactly what I’m supposed to be doing. I’ve been violently ripped away from the life I was living before most of our community was sent home. Adapting to this new lifestyle has been daunting.

Never once did I think that I would see a Korean movie win Best Picture at the Oscars in my lifetime. To see Bong Joon Ho rise and accept the American film industry’s highest accolade was joyfully dissonant, after feeling invisible in the media for so long. But now that the after-party is over, suddenly my vision cleared, and I’ve started to question this whole affair.

Prem Thakker is a junior in Columbia College studying history, hailing from Grand Forks, North Dakota. If you would like to hang out, he’d love to take a walk in Morningside Park, share a meal at a dining hall, or toss a Frisbee with you. You can also find him on Twitter @prem_thakker. His column, Colon, Closed Parentheses, runs alternate Mondays.